This is a brief list of things that annoy me. Scratch that—not annoy me; infuriate me. Teeth-clenching, sweat-inducing rage triggers. If you’re on this list, I HATE YOU and I hope you sit on a tack.
Hey, pickletits, you know what? I’m six feet five inches tall, and I ALREADY DON’T FIT IN THIS FLYING SARDINE TIN. When you oh-so-merrily tilt back to get an extra couple of inches of legroom for your five-foot-eight-inch frame, I want to strangle you with the strap of your Coach bag. I was already flossing with my kneecaps before you started invading my space, and it’s literally all I can do not to rip off the tray table and beat you savagely about the head and shoulders until you return to the upright position. I know the seat’s uncomfortable, but you leaning it back won’t suddenly turn it into a recliner, and your blithe ignorance of human anatomy (as regards the length of tibiae and the bending of knee joints) makes Bad Thoughts percolate through my brain. Also, it crunches down my laptop screen, so I get the added bonus of dislocating my spine if I try to watch anything on it.
Don’t be a dick. Leave your seat alone and suffer through the flight like the rest of us, because I can guarantee you I’m going to kick the back of it like a hyperactive five-year-old until you figure things out (kick being a relative term, given my complete inability to move anything below the shoulders, so I’ll have to settle for a pointed knee jab as I fruitlessly try to find a more comfortable position).
You guys are assholes, plain and simple. Do you really think the rest of us are sitting bumper to bumper listening to shitty music while the sun broils us alive inside our cars because we enjoy it? No, we don’t enjoy it. In fact, it really sucks. We’re sitting here slowly contemplating a re-creation of Falling Down but not driving on the side of the road, because we learned this amazing concept in kindergarten called WAIT YOUR FUCKING TURN, YOU TROGLODYTE. We know there’s a merge up ahead. We saw the signs! Apparently, though, it’s too much to ask for any of you guys to follow the same goddamn rules of the road as everyone else, so we get to wait an extra twenty minutes while you scream past in your custom flame-decal F-350 with a three-foot lift as Nickelback blares forth like an apocalyptic clarion call and then nudge your way in front of some terrified housewife who’s a shattered wreck for the next three days.
Every single time I see one of you syphilitic toads, I take great pleasure in pulling in front of you and then proceeding to travel at exactly two miles an hour. Keep laying on the horn—I might just let other people pass me so you get back from your power lunch even later! You’re a festering jizzstain and I hope your urethra gets invaded by poisonous spiders. Oh, and those truck nutz? Not as hilarious as you think they are.
Look, I get it. You’re a fan of some obscure indie-folk-funk-trailer rock-narwhal yodeler who records only through a Fisher-Price cat keyboard while applying fifteen different effects pedals at once. That’s great. I’m happy for you. Now I’d like to introduce you to this amazing new invention called PUT SOME HEADPHONES ON BEFORE I MURDER YOUR FACE WITH A HAM.
I don’t want to hear your crappy music! If I wanted to hear your crappy music, I’d go buy it and listen to it, and the fact that I haven’t should give you a very solid clue that I’m not interested in the soothing strains of Bespoke Dildonics. Do you really think your mad iTunes DJ skills are going to make a party suddenly appear (possibly with Bud Light and a bewildered Pitbull)? No! Stop polluting the air in a forty-five-meter radius because you just have to share the latest underground club hit from Lil’ Big Yolo, because if you don’t, I’m going to pull up some crap by Smashing Pumpkins that sounds like a violin being run through Satan’s asshole and make us all miserable.
(Also, if your headphones are Beats by Dre, that shit doesn’t count. Those are useless for actually keeping noise contained in the ear canal. Seriously, there’re old-school boom boxes that are quieter.)
Aghgh! Stop it! No one enjoys it when you stroke someone’s forearm while expounding earnestly on the merits of double flushing, or when you drape your arm over a guy’s shoulder while going over the TPS report. It’s gross, it’s creepy, and it’s really not cool, man. Notice how I’m not humping your leg while we’re having a conversation? Extend the same respect to me, please. If I wanted to be touched inappropriately, I’d go drop some soap in the prison shower, but we’re fully dressed in the middle of an Applebee’s, so knock it off.
Seriously. We all know you got that handicapped placard from your doctor buddy whom you have a five-martini lunch with every Thursday out at the golf course, and when I have to walk by BGMONEY or PWRPLYR parked in the disabled spot, I want to take a nine iron to your scrotum, especially when you come running out of Starbucks because you’re late for your tee time. You’re a giant fraud, and if there’s any justice in the universe, one day your car will run over your ankles so you’ll actually qualify for that sticker. I hope your triple latte sets your upholstery on fire, and your wife runs off with the cabana boy.
“Oh, that’s amazing, you came in second place in your track meet, just super; did I ever tell you about the time I won the Boston Marathon while running backward and suffering from Ebola? It wasn’t really a big deal, I only spent two years training under the Dalai Lama to focus my seventeen core chakras, reaching a level he said he’d never seen before, but I have to say, I think it definitely helped me nail that Oscar-winning role in the remake of Les Mis I starred in—no, not the one they premiered at the Guggenheim, that place is sooooo overrated, ours was at this eco-friendly fair-trade village that was built for starving African orphans with typhus, and it was absolutely marvelous—life-altering, even. Why are you grabbing that baseball bat?”
Just absolute wastes of oxygen. Think they’re so special with their itemized descriptions and clever bullet-point formatting. Douches.